Tag: Nablus

written by Conor

The game of cat-and-mouse with the army intensifies… We’re not exactly sure what is going on here, but the army has become much more aggressive towards the internationals in Nablus. A few days ago three internationals were arrested after trying to bring food to an occupied house. These are homes that the army rolls in and takes over, usually keeping the family in one room in the basement or first floor and locking them in while they trash the house (we’ve seen campfires built in stairwells and toys and clothes strewn about). Because of the illegal curfew the family are not allowed out of the room and are sometimes locked up for weeks at a time. The checkpoints have become much more intense and impenatrable. When a group of internationals tried to enter through the main checkpoint at Huwarra village they were told that “No internationals, no Palestinians, not even press may enter Nablus. Not even that donkey there may enter.”

When a group of us went to the demonstration at Huwarra on Saturday we had not even crossed the checkpoint when a jeep drove up and told us all to leave Nablus, “I arrested three of you yesterday and I will arrest you if I need to. You must leave.” There were no negotiations. We are very worried because this is what happened in Jenin a few months ago with the massacre/invasion there, closing off the town to press and internationals so that no one would know what they were doing there. (The three arrested, by the way, were released in Jerusalem. They had been charged with “shielding rock-throwing children with your bodies.” Can you even fathom that? Charging someone with a crime for preventing soldiers from shooting children who pose zero threat to their armored tanks? No dissent or resistance is tolerated in Nablus. The charges were later dropped–there weren’t even any children around when they were arrested–it seems they just wanted them out of Nablus.)

On Saturday a group of about 30 internationals from GIPP (Grassroots International Protection for Palestinians–a largely European group) and ISM (International Solidarity Movement–my group) traveled to Huwarra, the village right outside Nablus and next to the main checkpoint, for a joint Tayush (Israeli Peace Group)/Palestinian/International demonstration against the occupation and curfew. Huwarra, being right next to the main military base in Nablus, thus bears the full brunt of the occupation. The town has been under almost continuous curfew for TWO YEARS and has had food shortages for about two months. Virtually nothing has been allowed in or out of the town since the beginning of the intifada in 2000. Can you imagine being threatened by a foreign army with injury/arrest/death (snipers) if you left your house for two years? Apparently there was a TV announcement of the demonstration and the last one ended with the arrest and injury of several activists, so were were nervous already when we found out that no one was even being allowed out of Nablus today. We then took a route that included three separate legs of taxi drives (one by my friend Ibrahim who is proving ever resourceful) to get around the roadblocks and checkpoints (without crazy/genius taxi drivers and cellphones this movement would not be possible) and a 2 kilometer walk along a settler road–not a very safe route to take.

When we made it into Huwarra we found the march ready to start and, sure enough, it did 3 minutes after we arrived. There were dozens of Palestinians with banners and flags chanting and moving through the streets and we didn’t really have time to prepare or get in position. Military police (the most brutal of the military we deal with) showed up immediately, so we tried to position ourselves between the police and the Palestinians, holding up our hands and shouting that this was a peaceful demonstration. There were no rocks thrown or any weapons anywhere in the crowd, but the police jumped out of their jeeps and tossed several bright orange concussion grenades at us (also known as flash-bang grenades–they explode with a loud flash and a boom and it disorients and shocks you–like a mild concussion) and shot several tear-gas mortars into the crowd, including the long range kind meant to be fired in an arc but they shot many straight into the crowd–two wizzed by my head and legs. I had not had time to take my contacts out, and you can be blinded with the gas the army uses if you leave them in so I ducked down an alleyway coughing and choking and frantically pulled out my contacts. I couldn’t see for a few minutes but soon there were arms helping me to my feet and someone shoved an onion under my nose–it cuts the gas quite effectively– and as I regained my senses I found it was a small crowd of Palestinian children helping me, looking quite concerned for this foreigner. We ran back into the street where the army continued tear gassing and tossing concussion grenades while driving their jeeps through the crowds at intimidating speeds. Once close enough they would toss tear gas grenades out the back of the jeeps, which was bad because those things just explode in a cloud of gas that’s very hard to escape. All the while we tried to stay within and in front of the crowd and document the whole thing. I suspect the presence of internationals at the rally kept things from getting quite nasty.

As it was it only generated a paragraph in a story buried deep within CNN’s website. They know if internationals were killed then it would be a huge story, and in solidarity with the Palestinians we used that privilege to protect them. We moved back from the main street, regrouped with the Palestinians, and then heard the chanting of the few hundred Israeli peace activists who had bussed down for the demonstration and dodged their way through the tanks of their own army with trucks of food for the village. We joyously joined together and Palestinian embraced Israeli embraced International. Together we turned to the army and began to chant in Hebrew and Arabic, “Peace, yes! Occupation, no!” The Israelis and Internationals linked arms and surrounded the crowd to protect the Palestinians as a long train of armored personnel carrier’s and tanks entered the village and people were laughing, crying, and hugging while the Palestinian children banged together the cans of baby formula the Israelis had brought with them. It was one of the most beautiful things I have been blessed to witness.

Afterwards the Israelis left and we started the long journey back to Nablus through the checkpoints. We had three Palestinians from Nablus with us, and we were quite worried for them. Sure enough, our taxis got stopped by a checkpoint and we told them we were on our way to leave the West Bank, so they agreed to let us pass but they wanted to check our passports. We had put our sunglasses and hats on the Palestinians to make them look more like geeky Western internationals, and we mobbed the soldier checking passports, some of us making him check our id’s two or three times to confuse him as we slipped the Palestinians through with our group. We made it into a village outside of Nablus that night, but there was heavy shooting and reports of rockets in Nablus, so we decided to wait until morning to enter. This worried all of us as that left most of the threatened homes empty of Internationals, and most of us have grown quite close to the families.

The next morning we heard from other internationals that the hills were crawling with soldiers and that all roads were closed. Most of the internationals decided to go with some crazy/genius taxi drivers who said they knew a way around the checkpoints, but to make sure at least some of us made it back Carina, the Dane, and I led another international and one of the Palestinian women over the hills in the way we knew. We made it back into Nablus, but were confronted with the news that tanks had shelled the marketplace there (!) see the article from CNN’s website below) and that many children were injured. As I entered Balata Refugee Camp my friends and the children greeted us as warmly as ever (including shoving food and tea into my hands–I’ve never consumed so much tea or coffee in my life–the people here won’t let you get out the door without feeding you or giving you coffee). I spent the rest of the day working on my village project (have I mentioned this? I’ve been kind of sucked into the role of “Village Coordinator.” I’m doing a survey of all the villages around Nablus to find out the food, medical, and water needs and getting contacts in all the villages so we can start to get them some relief. Most have been strangled by the blockade/curfew. Roadblocks and checkpoints block the roads into the town they rely on as a commercial center and ambulances sometimes take hours to get through the army). I arrived to find my family’s house un-destroyed and with my social standing greatly elevated since they saw me on Al-Jazeera chanting “Free, free, Palestine!” with Palestinians and Israeli peace activists at Huwarra.

Today I have spent more time working on the village project, trying to finish the work before I leave Nablus on Thursday. The army has cracked down both on internationals and Palestinians. Before the curfew was imposed by roving checkpoints with arrest for those who were caught, but determined folks (like me) could usually give them the slip. Today there were tanks on all the main roads and there has been firing all day, including the deep boom of the tank cannon. As I dodged through the streets today the children would tell me where the “jeysh” (soldiers) were and my only other company was litter blowing through the deserted, bullet-riddled streets of one of the biggest cities in the West Bank. Last night an F-16 was flying over for several hours, dropping high-powered flares to illuminate the entire refugee camp. We panicked and called the US consulate to inform them that there were American citizens in Balata. The marine security guard there replied that yes, the Israeli army knew.

“We just don’t want to get bombed,” I said.

“Well, that’s why the State Department warns Americans not to travel in the West Bank,” he said.

“Well, that’s kind of why we have to be here,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah… Ok. Bye”

“Goodbye.”

We thought they might be targeting a building with a 1-ton bomb like they dropped on a Gaza Strip apartment building to assassinate a militant leader when he was visiting his wife and child in late July. They killed them and 13 other people. There is no value here placed on Palestinian lives. If 15 have to die to get at one, then that is acceptable. It was an apartment building full of people and they knew that just as surely as they knew he would be there that night. This is the nature of the occupation. I slept on the roof that night to better hear the army when they came, shoes on, cellphone by my side.

Peace,
Conor, Balata Refugee Camp, Nablus, occupied West Bank

P.S. Here’s an article I found buried deep within CNN’s website. It’s one of the only articles I’ve found that quotes “Palestinian sources” alongside the Israeli army. The part at the end is about the demonstration. The fact that they would just decide to fire a tank shell into the crowded market to get at one guy with a rifle who posed little threat to their heavily armored tank I think just illustrates my point. By the way, CNN has been quite awful about covering Palestinian deaths and tragedies with anywhere near the same amount as Israeli, this despite the fact that far more Palestinians have died during the uprising than Israelis. The New York Times, while far from perfect, at least tries to be a bit balanced.

NABLUS, West Bank (CNN) — Nine Palestinians, including four children, were wounded by Israeli forces at a marketplace in the ” old city ” area of Nablus Saturday evening after citizens broke the enforced curfew to get food and supplies, according to Palestinian sources. But the Israeli military said people at the scene were caught in crossfire after Israeli forces trying to enforce the curfew were fired on by a Palestinian gunman and fired back. Palestinian sources said the incident took place around 6 p.m. After citizens spilled into the marketplace to buy food and other supplies, tanks and armored personnel carriers entered the area and shelled the marketplace, where about 100 people were congregated. There was heavy machine gun fire and one tank shell from the armored vehicles, the Palestinian sources said. Among those hurt were four children — two 10 year olds, a 14 year old and a 15 year old — Palestinian sources said. Two people aged 18 and 27 were seriously wounded, they said. Israeli military sources said when Palestinians broke the curfew, the army came in with armored vehicles to reimpose it. Israeli forces approached the Palestinians and asked them to go home. The forces were shot at by a gunman in an alley way, and the forces returned fire, the military said, catching the Palestinians in the crossfire. The gunman was apparently wounded in the exchange and taken away by people at the scene, the military said. Also, near Nablus, there was a demonstration against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank attended by a few hundred Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners. They tried to enter Nablus, but Israeli forces shot tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades at the demonstrators, Palestinian sources said.

By Adam Stumacher

The town of Beit Fureek lies a mere seven kilometers from the West Bank city of Nablus, but under military curfew they might just as well be separated by an ocean. According to Atef Hanini, the town’s mayor, not a single resident of this town has been to Nablus for two months now. As a farming community, Beit Fureek is dependent on access to the nearby city in order to sell produce, and most of the town’s working population is employed there (though of course were they by some miracle able to get to Nablus, they would find all shops and businesses closed due to 56 consecutive days of military curfew). However, the real crisis in Beit Fureek is not unemployment, but water.

Every ounce of water for this town of 12,000 residents must be brought by truck from Nablus. The Israeli authorities have refused to tap into the water pipeline that passes less than five hundred meters from city limits. But perhaps more significantly, there is a spring close enough to this town that the residents can hear its gurgling (when their ears are not filled with the sound of M16 rounds). This spring has enough water that it could meet the needs of all the town’s residents, plus the residents of the nearby community of Beit Dajan, which faces the same water shortage. But one hundred percent of the water from this spring is diverted to illegal Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley. So the water tanker truck has become the tenuous lifeline for this whole community.

The town owns a total of five water tankers. The trouble is, these trucks are sporadically held at the army checkpoint on the Nablus access road. In theory, the trucks have permission to pass back and forth to Nablus between the hours of 10 AM and 2 PM. But soldiers often detain the trucks so long at the checkpoint that even completing one run per day can be a challenge. Sometimes, when unable to pass through the checkpoint, desperate truck drivers fill up from non-sanitary water sources, which has contributed to a outbreak of amoebic dysentery in the town (which has almost no access to medical care, again due to the curfew).

Beit Fureek has been averaging eight tankers of water per day since April, while Hanini assesses the community’s basic survival need at twenty twenty six tankers per day. But when I visited the town today, extremely strict enforcement at the checkpoint for the past couple of days meant that only one water truck had arrived in the town over the last 48 hours. Hanini asserted that this was a fairly typical pattern, and the military would most likely ease up enforcement at the checkpoint in the next day or two.

Some town residents have been without water in their homes for over 40 days now. The only way this community survives is by sharing whatever limited resources they have with their neighbors. Lack of water has severely damaged the town’s agricultural output. Farmers have stopped watering their crops, and most of the town’s livestock has been slaughtered because there is insufficient water to keep both animals and humans alive. In short, the people of Beit Fureek are being murdered, very slowly and systematically, by the conditions under Israeli occupation.

But the killings are not always so slow. I spent the night in the home of Munir, a extremely eloquent and erudite engineer in his late twenties (unable to travel to his work in Nablus since April because of road closures). Over thick cups of coffee under his back yard grape arbor, he told me the story of his late uncle, Mohammed Zamut:

This event took place last October, during the town’s annual olive harvest. This is an extremely dangerous time of year in Beit Fureek, as the town’s olive groves are close to the Israeli settlement of It Mar (the grove has been there for many generations, but the settlement lands were siezed, in violation of international law, less than twenty years ago). Every year for the past three years, at least one villager has been fatally shot by settlers while harvesting olives, but no settler has served a single day of jail time for these crimes.

Last year, the seventy-year-old Zamut was helping with the harvest when he turned up missing at the end of the day. His family searched for him all night, and Israeli security forces were alerted but refused to assist in the search. Zamut’s body was finally found near the olive grove the next morning. This seventy year old man had been shot, but this was not what killed him. His arms were cut off below the elbows and his legs severed below the knees, but these attrocities did not kill him either. Nor did his left eye, which was found pulled out of his socket. According to a coroner’s report, his death occurred when his skull was crushed by a large rock. Israeli authorities eventually arrested and tried a settler by the name of Gurham for this crime, but Gurham pleaded temporary insanity and was acquitted, never serving jail time.

Every person I have met here in Palestine has a story to tell, and every story leaves me unable to breathe. I want to curl into fetal position and cry, or thrash on the ground and shout at the top of my lungs, but I cannot. Instead I offer my condolences to Munir and sip my coffee, silently renewing my pledge to fight this injustice with every ounce of my energy.

Dr. Martin Luther King once said that we should not rest until justice flows like water. But for the people of Beit Fureek, the tankers are still detained at the closest checkpoint.

by Sam Messier and Jill Dreier

This morning the military pulled out most, but not all, of its presence from Nablus. Though still officially under curfew, many people started coming out into the streets and opening their shops. Internationals, including the two of us from Colorado, purchased several bags of food to distribute to families who were still too frightened to leave their homes during curfew.

While purchasing bread, the internationals witnessed two APC’s pull up outside the bread shop. As the shop-owner hurriedly closed up, the internationals shielded him and his customers from the soldiers and escorted the remaining customers to their nearby houses. A Molotov cocktail was thrown from an alleyway at street level. It grazed one APC, but caused no injury to the soldier inside. The soldier immediately began firing into the surrounding buildings, not just where the Molotov was tossed from but into upper floor apartments. The internationals shouted for him to stop. After a brief stand-off, the soldiers backed away and left.

Less than an hour later, the soldiers returned to this area with reinforcements, more APC’s and a tank. Internationals stood on the street between the soldiers and the Palestinian civilians, including many children on the street. Several Palestinian boys threw rocks in the direction of the tank and APC’s. Others chanted and shouted. Some of the soldiers got out of the vehicles and took aim with their guns as they stood behind corners. The tank made a show of raising and lowering its gun at us.

After about 5-10 minutes, the soldiers advanced in their vehicles. Without the media present and being a small number of people, the internationals decided to stand aside and let the vehicles pass but followed them and then worked their way between the soldiers and the Palestinian boys in a narrow street. The situation grew very tense, and the internationals made the decision to move into an alleyway where the soldiers on foot wanted to move to take up position to fire their guns. With the internationals in the alley off to the side, rocks and live fire were exchanged. The Palestinian boys ran away after the shooting started. After about 10-15 minutes, the soldiers retreated. Three internationals with first-aid training went to check to see if any Palestinians were injured, but fortunately everyone was OK. The entire event was videotaped.

After this, the internationals participated in several activities – including an investigation of occupied houses and houses under threat of demolition. Internationals also accompanied relief workers to distribute food and medicine. Earlier in the day a Palestinian relief volunteer was arrested from the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees center. The reason given was that he was wearing a medallion with the photo of a martyr around his neck.

Internationals accompanied the relief workers all afternoon as they delivered medicine to sick children and infant formula and some staple food supplies. Infant formula is not available in the shops in the old city, and the only way people can get it while under curfew is for these volunteers to deliver it. One of out deliveries was to a house being occupied by soldiers. We had to pass the formula through a small hole in the wall because the door was barricaded.

During our deliveries, we were asked to go and intervene in an arrest under progress. About two blocks away, two Palestinian men, a taxi driver and passenger (recently there are almost no taxis out and about), were handcuffed and were being placed in a military vehicle. One male international attempted to intervene but was roughly forced away by the soldiers. Next we approached the soldiers.

They told us to stop, but we kept walking with our hands out to our sides. They fired into the air. We slowed down but kept walking. They then lowered a gun to aim at us, but we continued walking. Then they started walking towards us very fast so we stopped. When they reached us they demanded that we leave. We calmly explained that the people at the other end of the street had asked us to come and inquire about these men because they were quite concerned about them. The soldiers said that they were being arrested and taken to the detention camp. By this point they had been placed inside the vehicle with the door closed. We tried to get more information, but were told that we were in no position to be asking questions of soldiers. I disagreed of course, but as they were becoming more aggressive and were only two internationals we left. I can only hope these two men are OK.

Palestinians keep asking me where I’m from. When I say the United States, they always respond with “You are welcome”. One of the relief workers told me that she thinks the people in the United States are good people, but they don’t know the truth about what is happening in Palestine. When they understand the truth, she says, she thinks they will support the Palestinian people and the occupation will end.

The truth is that after two invasions this year, the beautiful city of Nablus is littered with rubble that was once people’s homes. One school was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again since April. Mosques have been desecrated. Young boys have been shot in the head simply for throwing stones at tanks or for simply being outside when the army doesn’t want them to be. People cannot buy food or medicine because they can’t leave their homes, and relief workers need international escorts to keep from being detained and arrested.
And when they get bored or just angry, the soldiers shoot at the kites – the one beautiful symbol of freedom left in Nablus. Every single person in the old city has a story of a home vandalized, a family member injured, a friend being killed. I have stopped going into homes to photograph damage done by soldiers because it would literally consume all of our time.

———-
Sam Messier and Jill Dreier, with the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace are in Palestine joining hundreds of internationals with the International Solidarity Movement in nonviolent direct action to end Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine. More on their trip at: www.ccmep.org/palestine.html

By Jill Dreier

What the UN refuses to do in Palestine: Internationals Help Deliver Food & Stop Bullets

‘No here we have nothing to live for, so we don’t care, but YOU, you have to return to tell the world what is happening here,
so YOU take care”

So, before I get started about yesterday, let me say that while Sam was dodging rubber bullets, tear gas and sound bombs at the demonstration today (courtesy, of course, of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)), I didn’t have one gun pointed at me or any shots fired over my head today. For the first day since I have been here in Nablus.

Ok, yesterday: while Sam, Merna and I were buying bread for families, two Israeli armored personnel carriers (APC’s) pulled up and shut the bread stand down. Then as one APC pulled away, a kid in the alley right next to the APC threw a Molotov cocktail and scored a hit on part of the APC.

So the Israeli soldiers FREAK out and start shooting into the apartment building, in the completely wrong direction. We SCREAMED at him and he stopped, but the other APC heard the fire and came back around the corner for ‘support’. We de-escalated the soldiers and then one said to me, “go and bring me the map.” (y’all will like my Israeli accent).

So I walked down the street looking for a map. Now, meanwhile the people on the street have emptied and they are all hiding in the alleys and coves and such. So I walk down and several are yelling to me, ‘what does he want?’ Of course I don’t understand until someone yells in English, but I had the gist already and was saying, ‘who the hell knows?’

I picked up some paper trash and called back to him, ‘is this it? Is this it?’ — it’s good to play dumb, of course. So, they pulled back and left. Well, I needed a breather after that one, so we left the scene for about five minutes. Moments later we get a call, that now there are tanks, APC’s and some jeeps in the same area, as well as 12 international activists — could we immediately go there?

Due to a horrible lack of communication, no one had any idea what we had just been thru when we arrived. Of course from OUR end we had gotten the word out about what happened. So, long story longer – Palestinians started throwing rocks and since this is about their only form of resistance, we stepped back. This of course let the IOF be able to fire their guns (hard to explain without seeing the street). Two jeeps even pulled up right in front of us and opened fire. Of course we were screaming and then they stopped and took off.

The cool part is being in the streets with the Palestinians and feeling their energy as they clap and chant (they get loud — they chant ‘god is great’) and stand with us, knowing the tanks and such won’t fire at them with us there. There aren’t ANY women of course, and that sucks….

Digressing a bit: three or four nights ago, Sam and I walked down the road into the Balata Refugee Camp and stayed at a martyr’s house. Stressed out family. Since then I have been with a few more martyr’s families and realized that that family was an exception, according to my experience because these families were like all the rest of the families here, kind kind kind. I swear I have never drank so much coffee and tea in my life.

Another woman, Serena, stayed at the stressed out family’s house the next night and told us the following morning that the family actually got into a fist fight (yeah, the wife and daughters too!) with their neighbor.

So today, most people went to a demonstration at the Huwara Checkpoint, an hour walk, but I decided to stay in Nablus. I hung out with four Palestinians relief volunteers and delivered milk to babies. Yeah, parents do not have milk for their babies/young children.

I heard today that Palestine has the largest growing population in the world, over 50% is under the age of sixteen. That was chill enough, but the workers want escorts for ‘security’ and since another volunteer was taken from the center the day before, they were a little more nervous .

Mohammed, the one taken yesterday was wearing a martyr necklace and the IOF ripped it off his neck (the pendent is of a photo of his friend, a martyr). A martyr, for those who do not know, is term used for a suicide bomber AND anyone who has been killed during this intifada. Mohammed was released today, but they beat him up pretty badly, so he is home for a bit. No reason for detaining him at all.

So, after walking around delivering milk several internationals decided that they wanted to check on an apartment building on the hill where the soldiers were staying and occupying. After getting another international, the 6 of us headed up the hill to check on these families. I figured that they occupied that building strategically.

A few of us went in (women) and chatted with the Palestinian families and got their needs noted, foods and medicines. The apartment was 5 floors, 2 apartments on each floor. The soldiers had one complete floor and all them were shirtless, hanging out, playing guitar, like they owned the place, while 3 families were terrified for their lives. The other apartments were empty (it seemed like a brand new building, not fully occupied with residents).

So after that, we split into 3 groups of 2 to get the food and medicine. My partner was Fadi. A pretty resourceful guy, before I knew it he had gotten a ride in a big flatbed truck to Balata, where the UN warehouse is. Remember it is curfew, so NOTHING is allowed on the streets, let alone driving out to the outskirts of town. Curfew here has meant the last 40 days, 24 hours a day with tiny windows of precarious time to fetch food.

We made it and just after pulling in, a tank and a bulldozer showed up to close the road since cars were driving around. The UN warehouse is a joke. FOOD is everywhere, sitting around. The UN is a joke. Thousands of poor people with NO money to buy food in Nablus and WE hitch a ride, pick up food and deliver it ourselves.

On the way back, we saw a tank driving pretty fast on the parallel road but we beat it and got back to Nablus alright. Then we separated the food and got ready to go. Well, Fadi, wanted to get the one and only ambulance from the center to load the food to take up on the hill. But it wasn’t around, so we used his van — sketchy, eh?

Though we made it up there alright, the soldiers had switched out and all bets were off for us going back inside to deliver the food ourselves. After biting my lip and talking to the soldiers, they got one of the Palestinians to come out to bring the food in. The whole situation and bargaining and discussing is crap, although the soldier was talkable, if you know what I mean.

So during all of this, the soldier says, ‘you don’t remember me, do you?’ “oh, from before …..here right?” “No,” he replied and then I knew he was the guy looking for the map yesterday, in the APC.

“Oh yeah, I remember,’ I quipped back. He said, ‘So you didn’t help me yesterday, why should I help you?”( I was trying to get into the house and possibly spend the night there with the families.) I said, ‘What more could I have done, I walked down the street and looked for the map, geez?’

Talking to them is difficult and one must stay calm to help prevent retaliation against the Palestinians, believe me, whether there are soldiers who don’t ‘agree’ with the occupation or ‘hate’ when a Palestinian is killed, they all have a choice to refuse, and therefore, NO SYMPATHY from me.

One last thing. As we were walking back (dusk, I’m no longer too hesitant to walk in the dark, except for snipers) today a woman pulls up in a car and says, ‘aren’t you afraid to be on the street?’ I said, ‘no, not really, they recognize us now, they know who we are and why we are here.’ She said, ‘ take care’ I said to her, ‘aren’t you afraid to drive now?’ (many people sneak around in cars), and she said, ‘no here we have nothing to live for, so we don’t care, but YOU, you have to return to tell the world what is happening here, so YOU take care” and she drove off.

So many times during the day, I just want to release a little and cry but I don’t, and this was one of those times, for sure. I can only kind of get choked up, not cry, probably because I am so angry and not sad.

* Jill Dreier is one of two Coloradans from the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace in Palestine joining hundreds of internationals with the International Solidarity Movement in nonviolent direct action to end Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine.